The hometown veteran dominated the faceoff circle and earned a Masterton nomination last season. Now, Winnipeg must decide if his elite possession skills justify another veteran contract.
Depth at center has quietly become one of the most coveted commodities in the modern NHL, and the Winnipeg Jets may have a cost-effective answer already familiar to their locker room.
The Jets are reportedly considering bringing back veteran pivot Jonathan Toews on a discounted deal, giving the 38-year-old another chapter in a story that has already defied expectations at every turn.
It made headlines across the hockey world last summer when Toews, a three-time Stanley Cup champion and the longtime face of the Chicago Blackhawks dynasty, returned to his hometown to sign with Winnipeg.
The hope was that his championship pedigree and two-way game could anchor the Jets down the middle. The results, while modest on the scoresheet, told a more nuanced story.
Toews finished the 2025-26 regular season with roughly 30 points, numbers reminiscent of his final years in Chicago and not the production of a top-six driver. But the story of his season was never really about the points. It was about durability, character, and an elite skill that does not age the way skating does.
In the faceoff circle, Toews was nothing short of dominant. He posted a league-leading 62.1 percent win rate among centers who took 800 or more draws, ranking him atop the entire NHL at the dot.
That kind of consistency, especially at his age and after his prolonged health battles, is extraordinarily rare and immediately valuable to any coaching staff building line combinations around possession and zone starts.
Beyond the numbers, Toews offered something harder to quantify with his presence. He embraced a depth role with the same professionalism that defined his years as a captain in Chicago, providing stability behind Winnipeg's top centers and modeling the kind of veteran comportment that younger players absorb over a long season.
Toews was also named one of three finalists for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, the annual award honoring perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to the game. Few players in recent memory have embodied those qualities more visibly, having missed nearly two and a half seasons due to serious health complications before engineering one of the more quietly stunning comebacks the league has seen.
At 38, Toews is no longer the two-way force who could single-handedly anchor a line against opposing top units. But as a bottom-six forward capable of delivering 30 points, winning more than six in ten faceoffs, and steadying a dressing room through the grind of 82 games, the market for that profile at a reduced price point is extremely thin. The Jets would be hard-pressed to find a comparable option elsewhere, and they may not need to look far at all.
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